Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion Meridian - Systems The Quasi-Official Meridian CEDIA Q+A Topic.

Thanks John & Bob

Long read, very interesting. Just one question regarding above.

Which bits are hardware and which is implemented only in firmware. Speakerlink is obvious, but what about the new filters, or is it, without extra hardware, you get 75% of the performance benefit that an optimal setup would give?

Yes, another re-read and I suspect you are right. The downside of *only* including PCM, rather than a lossless compression, though is that it eats up space which could be given to video... for that reason I'd hope lossless codecs continue to be used...

Mark

Fabulous job John, many thanks!

Speed of M response suggests they recognize the fan base is a little grumpy, and while I cannot promise that I will not engage in some grousing in the months ahead, it is hard to argue with any of Bob's logic in the answers to our questions. And while we may be willing to fritter away our hard-earned cash on questionable upgrades, clearly M is not.

Clearly the ability to handle HDMI is coming - hopefully 8 channel input as well - and I have little doubt that the solution will be well-thought-out.

Comments on the current state of Bluray players are interesting (as well as Hollywood's view of the timing of sucess). Really do want to get a new player, but perhaps limping along with the 1st gen Sony is good enough for now.

Simon

Many thanks to John and Bob!



I suspect they will be. I think the majority get that, in order to try and coax people into upgrading they simply have to sell the format on both its visual and sonic superiority over DVD, along with all the special feature “enhancements” they like to babble on about.

Right now we`ve got every major studio bar one (Warner Brothers and soon New Line now that WB have swallowed them whole) consistently using a lossless codec on all their releases. Sony, The Weinstein Co and Paramount/Dreamworks favour TrueHD on everything. Fox/MGM, Lionsgate and Universal favour DTS HD Master Audio. Criterion are going with DTS HD MA for multi-channel mixes and PCM for mono/stereo presentations and a lot of the smaller and independent distributors are providing lossless too. Disney straddle between PCM and Dolby TrueHD (appearing to use the latter when they might be concerned about PCM robbing the image and special features of too much capacity and bandwdith. They will likely "do a Sony" and eventually move on form PCM to TrueHD entirely).

If all studios were acting like Warner, i.e being very selective about what titles get lossless audio (and constantly making their tracks 16bit like Warner always do, even if a master was 24bit) then I'd be more concerned about how serious a future lossless audio presentation had. Right now, the vast majority of distributors are treating it as an essential part of their product.

Thanks for being the point man and doing the work John.

No, because the apodizing occurs during the upsampling. Don't worry; I re-read Bob's quote and apodizing filters for the processors are definitely coming!

I'll say it again - it's incredible that my 10 year old kit is getting upgraded to sound better than ever (and for free!) And it's encouraging that Meridian are continuing to push the envelope with digital (cf Apodizing Filter). A pat on the back for all of us, I reckon, for choosing the best company to supply our kit

Mark

Great stuff.....Bob, John and the gang.....many thanks for the time you put into this. I'll have to have a re-read later for some comments ...damn this day-job !!! Very interesting....

Interesting comment. I missed this first time around.

Edit: And is this the first admission of a solution?

I am still processing the content but want to say first off that Bob is to be given a big thumbs up for responding so quickly. Thanks go to John as well.

I think we all take it for granted sometimes in what Meridian does for it's customers. Keep the faith they won't let us down.

Thanks again JK for the great work.

I echo these sentiments entirely, although I do feel that M could help itself with a little pro-active communication. Bob's pre-amble about HDMI would be perfect fodder for a blog.